Tibebe, D.; Degefu, M.A.; Bewket, W.; Teferi, E.; O’Donnell, G.; Walsh, C. Homogenous Climatic Regions for Targeting Green Water Management Technologies in the Abbay Basin, Ethiopia. Climate2023, 11, 212.
Tibebe, D.; Degefu, M.A.; Bewket, W.; Teferi, E.; O’Donnell, G.; Walsh, C. Homogenous Climatic Regions for Targeting Green Water Management Technologies in the Abbay Basin, Ethiopia. Climate 2023, 11, 212.
Tibebe, D.; Degefu, M.A.; Bewket, W.; Teferi, E.; O’Donnell, G.; Walsh, C. Homogenous Climatic Regions for Targeting Green Water Management Technologies in the Abbay Basin, Ethiopia. Climate2023, 11, 212.
Tibebe, D.; Degefu, M.A.; Bewket, W.; Teferi, E.; O’Donnell, G.; Walsh, C. Homogenous Climatic Regions for Targeting Green Water Management Technologies in the Abbay Basin, Ethiopia. Climate 2023, 11, 212.
Abstract
Spatiotemporal climate variability is a leading environmental constraint to the rain-fed agricultural productivity and food security of communities in the Abbay basin and elsewhere in Ethiopia. The previous one-size-fits-all approach to soil and water management technology targeting did not effectively address climate-induced risks to rain-fed agriculture. This study, therefore, delineates homogenous climatic regions and identifies climate-induced risks to rain-fed agriculture that are important to guide decisions and selection of site-specific technologies for green water management in the Abbay basin. The k-means spatial clustering method was employed to identify homogenous climatic regions in the study area, while the Elbow method was used to determine an optimum number of the climate clusters. The k-mean clustering used the Enhancing National Climate Services (ENACTS) daily rainfall, minimum and maximum temperatures, and other derived climate variables that include daily rainfall amount, length of growing period (LGP), rainfall onset and cessation dates, and rainfall intensity, temperature, potential evapotranspiration (PET), soil moisture and AsterDEM to define climate regions. Accordingly, 12 climate clusters or regions were identified and mapped for the basin. Clustering a given geographic region into homogenous climate classes is useful to accurately identify and target locally relevant green water management technologies to effectively address local-scale climate-induced risks. The study has also provides a methodological framework that can be used in the other river basins of Ethiopia and indeed elsewhere.
Keywords
Climate homogenization, K-means clustering, Green water, Technology targeting, Abbay basin
Subject
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Atmospheric Science and Meteorology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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